#52, the reason they chose to use a PCI slot is most likely because that allows them to use standby power to retain the content of the RAM drive. If you check what's been written about the Gigabyte RAM disk card you will find that the battery is only used when the machine is unplugged, or when there is a power outage.
"#50, yeah there is another purpose other than power. The PCI slot holds the card in place so it doesn't rock around inside your tower. :)"
Again, you don't need a PCI slot for that. A mounting bracket would solve that just fine, and possibly even give me room for two in a single 5.25 bay. It's solid state - the thing isn't going to move.
My _theory_ is that the PCI bus is used for something other than just power. Maybe some kind of configuration and/or debugging. I find it tough to believe they made this thing use PCI for power alone, because a simple 4-pin would have solved that pretty easily.
#40 What are you talking about I have been installing PC's with ASrock boards (K8 Combo-Z and K8Upgrade-1689) and all super stable and fast (boot time records!!!). I have to say that these are all much faster than the asus boards that I was installing (K8V SE, ...)
You must have been unlucky, and don’t forget one thing if mobo makers and bios makers put the same affords they do on intel chipsets, I doubt that Uli and Sis looked so bad...
You are right with your guess that even the newest and fastest SATA drives fail to max out a SATA I connection. I think my Raptor maxes out at about 70-something MB per second. Not even half the capability of the SATA interface.
I am supremely interested in this card, but I think if I was going to be paying that much per GB, I would wait for a SATA II connection, where the increase in bandwidth would be very apparent with 300MB/s sustained transfers.
MLITTL3 forgive my ignorance, but how does it come that data transfer through the SATA connector is faster when pumped by the i-RAM instead of a SATA HD ?
i mean, ok, i understand HD access latency is lower, but shouldn't we already have the SATA BUS at its max if we buy some kick ass SATA HD ?
or is it that SATA HDs around ( including RAPTORS, etc.. ) come nowhere near the bandwidth possibility of the SATA bus ?
Anyone have links for more on the i-Ram? ETA on the device?
I have some older DDR sticks just sitting around that are essentially worthless, seems like the i-RAM would make me a nice swap disk. Too bad it doesn't offer a port on the back for an optional wall wart though.
Also, on the AGP & PCIe boards - can you run both at the same time? Not SLI, I mean multi-monitor stuff.
#38/#41... I can't wait for those iRAM things to come out.
My plan: Stripe or JBOD two of those suckers with 4GB each in them together, then load my World of Warcraft files on it, then instantaneously load new zones and massive PvP battles while everyone else is lagging out!
You people need to get hold of yourselves and calm down about ULI. They used to make the worst pos chipsets as ALI and that's why they went under. Now rebranded as ULI you think they will be any better? Let me save you the trouble. Their chipsets are still piece of shit. I have a socket 939 motherboard that's just sitting there cause it wouldn't run at high performance settings. In fact, it corrupted my winXP install halfway through intslling drivers on it. Fresh install of windows gave me all kinds of problems thanks to a driver cd that installed winME USB drivers. So much for trying to save some time. Trust me, they went under for a reason. Stay away and stay happy. I now have two other socket 939 systems on VIA and Nvidia chipsets and sailing has been nothing but smooth. Can't say that for POS ULI which even if it runs stable can't match the other two in performance.
The Gigabyte iRAM is ONLY powered by the PCI slot. No, I repeat, NO data is moved through the PCI slot. When the PC is off, the RAM is powered by the rechargable battery.
The reason for only supporting DDR200 is because data transfers through the SATA port (the iRAM is seen as a SATA hard drive by the PC) on the PCB. So the bandwidth of SATA is 150 Mbytes/s (1200 Mbits/s) and the bandwidth of DDR200 is 200 Mbytes/s (1600 Mbits/s). Any faster memory will work (DDR333, DDR400, etc.) but will be clocked at DDR200 on the iRAM because the bottleneck is the SATA transfer bandwidth.
If they move the card to SATA II, 300 Mbytes/s (2400 Mbits/s) then they will support DDR333 which has a bandwidth of 337 Mbytes/s (2700 Mbits/s).
The iRAM will have latencies of tens of nanoseconds instead of 10 milliseconds. This is three orders of magnitude (1000 times) faster.
I know no one is going to read this and I'm going to get more frustrated.
First I was wondering why there was a VGA-out on the A8N-SLI Premium, then I realized the rear I/O panel shown is not the one from the A8N. In fact, it doesn't match anything on the page.
My girlfriend is going abroad in China this summer. I think I should have her pick me up one of these ULI boards with AGP and PCI-E if they aren't going to be releasing them in the states ;)
#29, I'm in total agreement with #31 here. Cool your jets there, killer. Sheesh! If Anand and his staff refused to sign that document, they wouldn't get past the door to even be able to give you a glimpse of new tech like this. Confidentiality is what these companines live and die by my friend, not NDA's.
nVidia and ATi know what they're doing. They'll tell us everything we need to know about the card WHEN WE NEED TO KNOW. This ain't the time yet, bud.
#29 It's not like anyone else has posted information about the G70 yet either. So either everyone is signing NDAs and, subsequently, getting screwed in the ass, or no one else is signing them and as a result don't get the information anyway because the companies won't give it away without an NDA.
Anand & Crew: You seriously need to rethink your automatic signage of NDA's. This is ridiculous. You're at a trade show where they are SHOWING the card off. You're taking PICTURES of the card and posting them online. But you still can't talk about it yet!
The bullshit here is that you keep signing such idiotic NDA's in the first place. YOU are the one responsible for this. Quit selling your soul for getting hardware a day early. Maybe at one point you thought you were getting a good deal, but from my viewpoint you're just getting screwed in the ass. Live by the NDA, die by the NDA.
I believe the i-RAM is just using the PCI Slot for power, not to xfer data. That's why there is a SATA Connection on the board itself, which will connect directly to the mobo's SATA port.
"#10 - what was the SN26P slated to offer? It might just already be on its way to market and not worth showing off as a future product? "
It was the nForce4 SLI XPC. You can see the obvious utility (SATA2, better hyper transport, SLI), especially since the SN25P used to be running a regular nForce4 (non-ultra).
Of course, now that the SN25P is using the ultra variant of the NF4, there's even less reason for the 26P to go to market. SFF is a small market - so is SLI. It just wouldn't have that much appeal. Still, I wish it had come out...
#10 - what was the SN26P slated to offer? It might just already be on its way to market and not worth showing off as a future product?
Btw the "PowerColor completely passively cooled X800 XL" is sexy. I want one of those to go in the SN25P I'm considering building, to keep down on the noise. I just wonder if a passively cooled card would be better in a full-size case where there is more space around the card for it to cool off. Hmmm... if Anand ever does more SN25P testing I'd like to see how that new Powercolor X800 XL holds up temp-wise in such a small case.
"DFI is my new hero. First reputable company mobo I've seen w/o legacy ports. Let's keep moving in that direction - less legacy more USB/FW2!"
Abit did a series of boards without any legacy components at least a year ago - and I think it was more like 2-3. Believe it or not, lots people actually complained that they needed the PS/2 ports, and Abit had to put them back on the newer versions of those boards.
ULi's AGP south bridge caught my eye. If it's compatible with the ATI crossfire(Or otherwise?) north bridges, could we see an ATI based motherboard supporting both PCIe 16x and AGP, using that ULi south bridge? That would be perfect for my friend who just bought a 9800 pro for his aging KT133a, only to find out it will NOT work in his current motherboard.. He's looking to upgrade the mobo/cpu/ram(Athlon 1.4 + pc133 ram.. so the whole thing has to get upgraded at once really).. A nice new S939 motherboard with an ATI or ULi northbridge and the ULi AGP southbridge would be perfect, without making him buy ANOTHER new mobo/cpu/ram when he wants an PCIe video card in 3 years.
Won't Abit's newer versions of nForce4 boards be transitioning to their "silent Q-OTES", instead of the fan-cooled board pictured?
From the many motherboards shown, only the Abit and DFI boards seem to be getting rid of the legacy parallel and serial ports. I'd like to see more legacy-free boards from ASUS, AOpen, MSI, Foxconn, and others.
And, are there any boards using SiS chipsets, that can compete with socket 939, nForce4 boards?
Thanks.
Quick question for you, Anand: when you say DDR200 in reference to the i-RAM card, do you mean PC3200 or PC1600?
It would seem to make zero sense to use PC3200 RAM, when the PCI bus is already limiting you to 133mb/s anyways. I hope they're using low-clocked RAM (makes more sense!), which is cheaper anyways...
I guess there's some latency differences, but at the nanosecond range, who's going to notice?
#4 - Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I want to upgrade my processor but would like to hang onto my 6800GT for a while. I hope that board makes its way to the US, because it would be a perfect solution for me.
if the nvidia g70 card is a single slot solution than the rumor that the g70 will burn 150w cannot be true right. anyone know what is the actual power rating for the g70?
That all looks quite exciting, the thing which caught my eye was the Pentium M XPC. I wonder now if Shuttle do one they'll get it right (Aopen's was cool but no SATA support...). Anyone know the model number for it?
Whew, that's was a lot of coverage, anand! I'll have to admit though, I was more interested in the vanilla Xpress 200 motherboards than crossfire/r520/g70/blah/blah/yawn.....Did you happen to notice any new Xpress 200 + socket 939 mobos? Even if you didn't have a chance to cover them, I'd be interested to know if you've seen/heard anything new. Well, congratualtions on another job well done.
That ULi chipset/motherboard with support for both AGP and PCI-Express really caught my eye. It would be a nice upgrade path for those of us still stuck with slower CPU's (Athlon XP in my case), but not quite ready to upgrade our high-end AGP video card yet (6800GT in my case).
That cmos reset button on Abit's front panel is pretty cool, if not somewhat of a gimmick. It just seems that the mobo mfgrs don't bother in asking the customers what we really want. If a mobo has a great bios then it's lacking in controllers or if it has higher DIMM voltage settings then it has ridiculous colors and LEDs.
Wow, a PC-based cablecard tuner is being held up by DRM requirements? What a surprise. Mark my words it'll never make it to market. I'd venture to say that we might see CC 2.0 tuners for a closed platform like the Xbox360 or PS3 (to turn it into a Tivo-like device), but never for a standalone PC. The MPAA would have to fall apart before a PC cablecard tuner will be allowed to be sold in the US.
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Tanstafl - Tuesday, June 7, 2005 - link
#52, the reason they chose to use a PCI slot is most likely because that allows them to use standby power to retain the content of the RAM drive. If you check what's been written about the Gigabyte RAM disk card you will find that the battery is only used when the machine is unplugged, or when there is a power outage.erwos - Friday, June 3, 2005 - link
"#50, yeah there is another purpose other than power. The PCI slot holds the card in place so it doesn't rock around inside your tower. :)"Again, you don't need a PCI slot for that. A mounting bracket would solve that just fine, and possibly even give me room for two in a single 5.25 bay. It's solid state - the thing isn't going to move.
mlittl3 - Thursday, June 2, 2005 - link
#50, yeah there is another purpose other than power. The PCI slot holds the card in place so it doesn't rock around inside your tower. :)erwos - Thursday, June 2, 2005 - link
My _theory_ is that the PCI bus is used for something other than just power. Maybe some kind of configuration and/or debugging. I find it tough to believe they made this thing use PCI for power alone, because a simple 4-pin would have solved that pretty easily.-Erwos
KayKay - Thursday, June 2, 2005 - link
Wow, this was an excellent article, one of the best i've seen to date.AGP and PCI-E on the same board, don't see much of that, but im sure people out there would appreciate it if it was widely available
nserra - Thursday, June 2, 2005 - link
#40 What are you talking about I have been installing PC's with ASrock boards (K8 Combo-Z and K8Upgrade-1689) and all super stable and fast (boot time records!!!). I have to say that these are all much faster than the asus boards that I was installing (K8V SE, ...)You must have been unlucky, and don’t forget one thing if mobo makers and bios makers put the same affords they do on intel chipsets, I doubt that Uli and Sis looked so bad...
jiulemoigt - Thursday, June 2, 2005 - link
this is wrong pikhttp://images.anandtech.com/reviews/tradeshows/200...
on p9
http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i...
there is three dead give aways one which i feel like
an idiot for missing is the VGA connector and the
others are the audio jacks are sperated in one pik but not in the cut away and it still supports two ethernet adapters which is also missing in the second pik.
Penth - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
mosoon:You are right with your guess that even the newest and fastest SATA drives fail to max out a SATA I connection. I think my Raptor maxes out at about 70-something MB per second. Not even half the capability of the SATA interface.
I am supremely interested in this card, but I think if I was going to be paying that much per GB, I would wait for a SATA II connection, where the increase in bandwidth would be very apparent with 300MB/s sustained transfers.
monsoon - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
MLITTL3 forgive my ignorance, but how does it come that data transfer through the SATA connector is faster when pumped by the i-RAM instead of a SATA HD ?i mean, ok, i understand HD access latency is lower, but shouldn't we already have the SATA BUS at its max if we buy some kick ass SATA HD ?
or is it that SATA HDs around ( including RAPTORS, etc.. ) come nowhere near the bandwidth possibility of the SATA bus ?
cordially,
JOHN
PS - please bear with my ignorance !!!
DanDaManJC - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
hmmm that ULi mobo, well specifically their chip that allows both agp and pci-express looks awesome!I've been waiting around for a solution like that... now all I need is $500 for the rest of the pc... haha *sigh*
Icehawk - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
Anyone have links for more on the i-Ram? ETA on the device?I have some older DDR sticks just sitting around that are essentially worthless, seems like the i-RAM would make me a nice swap disk. Too bad it doesn't offer a port on the back for an optional wall wart though.
Also, on the AGP & PCIe boards - can you run both at the same time? Not SLI, I mean multi-monitor stuff.
EODetroit - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
#38/#41... I can't wait for those iRAM things to come out.My plan: Stripe or JBOD two of those suckers with 4GB each in them together, then load my World of Warcraft files on it, then instantaneously load new zones and massive PvP battles while everyone else is lagging out!
Woohoo!
mlittl3 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
Oops, a little mistake in my post, #38. Actually a big mistake.Please ignore all the memory bandwidth numbers. I'm getting my bits mixed up with my bytes.
DDR200 -> 1600 Mbytes/s not 1600 Mbits/s
DDR333 -> 2700 Mbytes/s not 2700 Mbits/s
The SATA numbers and everything else is correct, however. I think.
Now I'm frustrated with myself. :)
gibhunter - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
You people need to get hold of yourselves and calm down about ULI. They used to make the worst pos chipsets as ALI and that's why they went under. Now rebranded as ULI you think they will be any better? Let me save you the trouble. Their chipsets are still piece of shit. I have a socket 939 motherboard that's just sitting there cause it wouldn't run at high performance settings. In fact, it corrupted my winXP install halfway through intslling drivers on it. Fresh install of windows gave me all kinds of problems thanks to a driver cd that installed winME USB drivers. So much for trying to save some time. Trust me, they went under for a reason. Stay away and stay happy. I now have two other socket 939 systems on VIA and Nvidia chipsets and sailing has been nothing but smooth. Can't say that for POS ULI which even if it runs stable can't match the other two in performance.erinlegault - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
I want one of those nForce 4 Pro dual socket Tyan motherboard's with dual core Opteron 2xx's.That should last a while through our current multitasking paradigm.
mlittl3 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
#13 and anyone else, please, please read this.The Gigabyte iRAM is ONLY powered by the PCI slot. No, I repeat, NO data is moved through the PCI slot. When the PC is off, the RAM is powered by the rechargable battery.
The reason for only supporting DDR200 is because data transfers through the SATA port (the iRAM is seen as a SATA hard drive by the PC) on the PCB. So the bandwidth of SATA is 150 Mbytes/s (1200 Mbits/s) and the bandwidth of DDR200 is 200 Mbytes/s (1600 Mbits/s). Any faster memory will work (DDR333, DDR400, etc.) but will be clocked at DDR200 on the iRAM because the bottleneck is the SATA transfer bandwidth.
If they move the card to SATA II, 300 Mbytes/s (2400 Mbits/s) then they will support DDR333 which has a bandwidth of 337 Mbytes/s (2700 Mbits/s).
The iRAM will have latencies of tens of nanoseconds instead of 10 milliseconds. This is three orders of magnitude (1000 times) faster.
I know no one is going to read this and I'm going to get more frustrated.
monsoon - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
looking forward to real world tests of the GIGABYTE i-RAM and the ZALMAN "hamster" cooler !;)Aquila76 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
LOL. I can't help thinking the Zalman CPU cooler should have a hamster running in it!ViperV990 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
First I was wondering why there was a VGA-out on the A8N-SLI Premium, then I realized the rear I/O panel shown is not the one from the A8N. In fact, it doesn't match anything on the page.ryanv12 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
My girlfriend is going abroad in China this summer. I think I should have her pick me up one of these ULI boards with AGP and PCI-E if they aren't going to be releasing them in the states ;)yacoub - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
#23"#20 Gigabyte already offers a "silent heatpipe cooled" Radeon X800 XL card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82... "
There are reports that the Gigabyte card does not fit in the SN25P case. =\
Momental - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
#29, I'm in total agreement with #31 here. Cool your jets there, killer. Sheesh! If Anand and his staff refused to sign that document, they wouldn't get past the door to even be able to give you a glimpse of new tech like this. Confidentiality is what these companines live and die by my friend, not NDA's.nVidia and ATi know what they're doing. They'll tell us everything we need to know about the card WHEN WE NEED TO KNOW. This ain't the time yet, bud.
hoppa - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
#29 It's not like anyone else has posted information about the G70 yet either. So either everyone is signing NDAs and, subsequently, getting screwed in the ass, or no one else is signing them and as a result don't get the information anyway because the companies won't give it away without an NDA.DeathByDuke - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
#14 Asus/Abit both did legacy free mobos 2 years ago for P4 and XP. they just didnt 'take off'Phiro - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
Anand & Crew: You seriously need to rethink your automatic signage of NDA's. This is ridiculous. You're at a trade show where they are SHOWING the card off. You're taking PICTURES of the card and posting them online. But you still can't talk about it yet!The bullshit here is that you keep signing such idiotic NDA's in the first place. YOU are the one responsible for this. Quit selling your soul for getting hardware a day early. Maybe at one point you thought you were getting a good deal, but from my viewpoint you're just getting screwed in the ass. Live by the NDA, die by the NDA.
FinFET - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
#13I believe the i-RAM is just using the PCI Slot for power, not to xfer data. That's why there is a SATA Connection on the board itself, which will connect directly to the mobo's SATA port.
CrystalBay - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
I agree #4&18 ULI with sataII southbridge is coolshaw - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
#22 I too had a Ti4200 and was happy with it's performance, but I dumped it the second FarCry came out in favor for a 9800Pro with PS2.0 support.erwos - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
"#10 - what was the SN26P slated to offer? It might just already be on its way to market and not worth showing off as a future product? "It was the nForce4 SLI XPC. You can see the obvious utility (SATA2, better hyper transport, SLI), especially since the SN25P used to be running a regular nForce4 (non-ultra).
Of course, now that the SN25P is using the ultra variant of the NF4, there's even less reason for the 26P to go to market. SFF is a small market - so is SLI. It just wouldn't have that much appeal. Still, I wish it had come out...
-Erwos
erwos - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
vailr - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
#20 Gigabyte already offers a "silent heatpipe cooled" Radeon X800 XL card:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82...
at80eighty - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
Vapor ware issues aside... i have a Ti4200 (happy with it too)but have been saving up for my next rig in about 6-9 months..
so far i was looking at 6800GT (possibly SLI) config..
question is.. should i wait for the G70?
Anand? anyone?
Warder45 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
So are we going to see anything other then photo's of the G70?yacoub - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
#10 - what was the SN26P slated to offer? It might just already be on its way to market and not worth showing off as a future product?Btw the "PowerColor completely passively cooled X800 XL" is sexy. I want one of those to go in the SN25P I'm considering building, to keep down on the noise. I just wonder if a passively cooled card would be better in a full-size case where there is more space around the card for it to cool off. Hmmm... if Anand ever does more SN25P testing I'd like to see how that new Powercolor X800 XL holds up temp-wise in such a small case.
erwos - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
"DFI is my new hero. First reputable company mobo I've seen w/o legacy ports. Let's keep moving in that direction - less legacy more USB/FW2!"Abit did a series of boards without any legacy components at least a year ago - and I think it was more like 2-3. Believe it or not, lots people actually complained that they needed the PS/2 ports, and Abit had to put them back on the newer versions of those boards.
-Erwos
Araemo - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
ULi's AGP south bridge caught my eye. If it's compatible with the ATI crossfire(Or otherwise?) north bridges, could we see an ATI based motherboard supporting both PCIe 16x and AGP, using that ULi south bridge? That would be perfect for my friend who just bought a 9800 pro for his aging KT133a, only to find out it will NOT work in his current motherboard.. He's looking to upgrade the mobo/cpu/ram(Athlon 1.4 + pc133 ram.. so the whole thing has to get upgraded at once really).. A nice new S939 motherboard with an ATI or ULi northbridge and the ULi AGP southbridge would be perfect, without making him buy ANOTHER new mobo/cpu/ram when he wants an PCIe video card in 3 years.vailr - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
That Zalman 9500 CPU cooler looks excellent: any temperature readings?Sapphire is supposed to soon be offering a "liquid metal Gallium" VPU cooler. Or, any sightings of a similar technology, CPU cooler?
See:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/news/307
http://www.sapphiretech.com/vga/blizzard.asp
http://www.nanocoolers.com/technology_liquid.php
shaw - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
Nice update! I'm still waiting for somebody to blow the whistle on the next gen GPUs.vailr - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
Won't Abit's newer versions of nForce4 boards be transitioning to their "silent Q-OTES", instead of the fan-cooled board pictured?From the many motherboards shown, only the Abit and DFI boards seem to be getting rid of the legacy parallel and serial ports. I'd like to see more legacy-free boards from ASUS, AOpen, MSI, Foxconn, and others.
And, are there any boards using SiS chipsets, that can compete with socket 939, nForce4 boards?
Thanks.
Aquila76 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
DFI is my new hero. First reputable company mobo I've seen w/o legacy ports. Let's keep moving in that direction - less legacy more USB/FW2!erwos - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
Quick question for you, Anand: when you say DDR200 in reference to the i-RAM card, do you mean PC3200 or PC1600?It would seem to make zero sense to use PC3200 RAM, when the PCI bus is already limiting you to 133mb/s anyways. I hope they're using low-clocked RAM (makes more sense!), which is cheaper anyways...
I guess there's some latency differences, but at the nanosecond range, who's going to notice?
-Erwos
ryanv12 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
#4 - Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I want to upgrade my processor but would like to hang onto my 6800GT for a while. I hope that board makes its way to the US, because it would be a perfect solution for me.bersl2 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
lol on ABIT's nuke button.Oh joy, DRM rears its ugly head again.
erwos - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
So, does this mean the Shuttle SN26P got cancelled? Damn.semo - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
if the nvidia g70 card is a single slot solution than the rumor that the g70 will burn 150w cannot be true right. anyone know what is the actual power rating for the g70?mjz - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
lets see some real world tests done with the gigbyte ram drive :pplewis00 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
That all looks quite exciting, the thing which caught my eye was the Pentium M XPC. I wonder now if Shuttle do one they'll get it right (Aopen's was cool but no SATA support...). Anyone know the model number for it?flatblastard - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
congratualtions=congratulationsflatblastard - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
Whew, that's was a lot of coverage, anand! I'll have to admit though, I was more interested in the vanilla Xpress 200 motherboards than crossfire/r520/g70/blah/blah/yawn.....Did you happen to notice any new Xpress 200 + socket 939 mobos? Even if you didn't have a chance to cover them, I'd be interested to know if you've seen/heard anything new. Well, congratualtions on another job well done.SynthDude2001 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
That ULi chipset/motherboard with support for both AGP and PCI-Express really caught my eye. It would be a nice upgrade path for those of us still stuck with slower CPU's (Athlon XP in my case), but not quite ready to upgrade our high-end AGP video card yet (6800GT in my case).bigboxes - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
That cmos reset button on Abit's front panel is pretty cool, if not somewhat of a gimmick. It just seems that the mobo mfgrs don't bother in asking the customers what we really want. If a mobo has a great bios then it's lacking in controllers or if it has higher DIMM voltage settings then it has ridiculous colors and LEDs.Doormat - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
Wow, a PC-based cablecard tuner is being held up by DRM requirements? What a surprise. Mark my words it'll never make it to market. I'd venture to say that we might see CC 2.0 tuners for a closed platform like the Xbox360 or PS3 (to turn it into a Tivo-like device), but never for a standalone PC. The MPAA would have to fall apart before a PC cablecard tuner will be allowed to be sold in the US.Waylay00 - Wednesday, June 1, 2005 - link
Wow, looks great! Must have A8N-SLI Premium...